Free Helpless by Marianne Marsh Page A

own.
    Still I couldn’t speak. I wanted him to put it away. It did not look like the little winkle that my brother had.
    But he didn’t. Instead his voice, light and slightly amused, continued.
    ‘One of those, you silly girl. Every little boy has one, you know. It’s just that I’m a man, so it’s bigger. You’ll enjoy touching it soon. It’s what big girls like to do.’
    I knew I wouldn’t. I had not liked its hard hot feel as it pressed against my stomach, nor had I liked the way it leaked all over my hand. But I could not find the words to explain how I felt.
    He saw the confusion in my face and returned in a split second to being my friend, the man who cared for me. My fingers were wiped clean, my head was stroked, my hair was smoothed back in place and a sweet found its way from his glove compartment into my mouth.
    He came to our house later that evening. ‘Got to go into town to see someone. Thought I would get us all a fish supper after,’ he said to my mother.
    He laughingly waived aside her protests that she could not let him pay for it. ‘Don’t worry your head about that. I had a bit of a windfall this afternoon so it’s my treat. I’ll get enough for everyone. You can bring the kids over to mine. We’ll eat there.’
    My mother, faced with an evening where there would be no samey meal of stew and no washing up, smiled a grateful acceptance of this generous offer.
    ‘I’ll get enough for your husband as well, so there will be a hot dinner for him when he returns. With nothing more for you to do, you can just relax round ours with Dora. I’ll only be with this chap about half an hour or so. I’ll take Marianne to help carry everything, if that’s all right.’
    ‘I don’t want to go,’ I blurted out.
    ‘Whatever’s got into you, Marianne?’ my mother asked furiously. ‘You just say you’re sorry for being so rude.’
    I thought, ‘Why could she not guess? Why can’t she see why he wants me to go too? Maybe she doesn’t care?’ My head was spinning round as to how to get out of going. But I knew that further protests were useless. All they would earn me was her hand across the back of my legs and being sent to bed with no supper.
    I sighed with resentment and, without answering, got up from my seat.

    ‘Maybe she’s a bit under the weather,’ he said, looking at me with a concerned expression. ‘Come on, Marianne, a drive in the car will do you good. Won’t it?’ he said, turning to my mother.
    ‘Course it will,’ she answered, throwing me a look bordering on hostility and quickly turning to smile gratefully at him.
    The man next door stretched out his hand, closed his fingers round mine and then led me out of the house.
    My skin prickled with bumps of fear. Surely there would be some sort of punishment for me, some recrimination for my outburst. A slap, perhaps, for my rudeness and for drawing attention to his interest in me. But I still had no understanding of the type of man he really was. He was never going to act as my father would have done when thwarted. Not for him a show of explosive rage, followed by the lashing out of fists. That he would have considered crude and barbaric. Neither would he have considered it dignified to emit harsh shouts and a torrent of foul language.
    No. His cruelty was subtle, and I was just about to receive a lesson in it, a lesson I did not recognize that night as having been given. His method of winning control was made up of equal quantities of manipulation and intimidation. Once he was satisfied that he had inflicted a wound that had cut deep, he then applied a dressing of praise and justification. It was only done for my own good, he would say. Once he had hurt me, once I knew he had caused the pain, it was he who would make everything better.

    As we drove into the town he turned into a dark street I had never seen before and pulled up in front of a row of derelict red-bricked houses. Remnants of tattered curtains blew out of broken